a caricature on the talk shows, you know, when you want to get a quick laugh, david letterman or jon stewart, they invoke joe biden. on the other hand, in fairness to him as well as to paul ryan, these are two irish catholic political warriors who come from different generations. both athletic. they both have a passion about what they're doing. and my own guess is at the end of the evening, one of the tests of a vice presidential debate is, can they handle the presidency? do we want them to be a heartbeat away? and i think in both cases, people would have to say you can have them in that job, and if something happens to the president, they could step it up. that was my judgment. >> mark, a lot of times these vp debates show that one is not ready to pass that threshold test last night, there's no doubt. joe biden has been in washington since he was 29. >> yeah. this was a threshold test. biden's obviously passed it. he's been there. it was a real threshold test for ryan. to your point about biden, you're right, people that know him like him, generally. but a lot of people watching didn't know
